"Reality has come in sight,
What did you see?
What did you hear?
What did you think?
What did you seek?
What did you do?"
Light and dark. Black and white. Left and right. On and off. Yin and Yang. 0 and 1. Almost anything in life can be reduced to a duality of opposites, and Ikaruga understands this not just from its famous polarity mechanic but the almost rhythmic flow of its level designs. Any shmup developer who's been there will tell you the importance of establishing a sense of flow to playing your game, and Ikaruga is the most striking example of this kind of design. Enemies will regularly be making you move to an invisible rhythm when playing Ikaruga, whether it be the starting enemies in stage 1 coming from the top-right/left corners of the screen, or the crushingly difficult "rose of madness" in the first half stage 4. Even the bosses embrace duality, such as the stage 1 boss shifting the polarity of its attacks between phases, the two-faced stage 2 boss which requires different polarities to take out each half, and the final boss' frenetic rush of overlapping bullet curtains.
This rhythm is amplified by the chaining system, which is much more proactive on the part of the player compared to Radiant Silvergun's one-colour restriction. Take out 3 enemies of the same colour in a row, regardless of which colour they are, and you'll add one chain to your current count. Each level and setpiece within is cleverly designed so that you can destroy every single enemy, including even extra enemies while not breaking your chain if you're good enough. Even though I'm not able to get S-ranks in any of the stages yet, pulling off the chains is very satisfying, with the maneuvers looking super cool when you time and position them just right. Ikaruga's chaining system feels more genuinely like building up a huge combo than any other shmup chaining system I've experienced, and gradually unraveling the chaining routes through each of the five stages is like peeling off the layers of an onion, giving the stages a new character and feel each time you get higher max chain counts.
A common criticism of Ikaruga is that the game is too slow-paced and "puzzle-like" for a shmup, especially in the first two stages, and frankly it's a criticism I agreed with for a long time, but this slowness withers away if you try chaining and get a greater feel for the polarity shifting. These slowly-scrolling setpieces become lightning fast, with you optimising frames in your movements even when going for A-ranks, let alone S-ranks. It helps that the ship movement speed in Ikaruga feels significantly faster than Radiant Silvergun's somewhat sluggish movement speed too.
You can't really talk about Ikaruga without bringing up its world-renowned presentational qualities. Although I like to avoid the rambling discourse over whether games are art or not, Ikaruga is definitely a game I'd consider to be oozing with artistic qualities. Speaking of art, this game is also blessed with some of the hardest going official artworks ever made, with a beautiful, grungy early 2000's cyberpunk anime kind of style. There's also the small but fantastic soundtrack by the director Hiroshi Iuchi, which while it doesn't quite reach the orchestral highs of Sakimoto's works for Radiant Silvergun, Iuchi's soundtrack perfectly matches the ebb-and-flows of the stages and bosses here, with a dramatic finish.
Admittedly Ikaruga can be a very difficult game to get into. It lacks the same immediate appeal of its predecessor, lacking the same scale in narrative, number of boss fights or even screen space taken by the game itself. The polarity mechanic is also even stranger than RS' 7-weapon system, with it feeling as though it's actively punishing conventional shmup gameplay patterns at points. Despite these idiosyncrasies of the game, for most of my time as a player of this genre, I've always respected Ikaruga, and as more time passes, I increasingly love it as well.
What did you see?
What did you hear?
What did you think?
What did you seek?
What did you do?"
Light and dark. Black and white. Left and right. On and off. Yin and Yang. 0 and 1. Almost anything in life can be reduced to a duality of opposites, and Ikaruga understands this not just from its famous polarity mechanic but the almost rhythmic flow of its level designs. Any shmup developer who's been there will tell you the importance of establishing a sense of flow to playing your game, and Ikaruga is the most striking example of this kind of design. Enemies will regularly be making you move to an invisible rhythm when playing Ikaruga, whether it be the starting enemies in stage 1 coming from the top-right/left corners of the screen, or the crushingly difficult "rose of madness" in the first half stage 4. Even the bosses embrace duality, such as the stage 1 boss shifting the polarity of its attacks between phases, the two-faced stage 2 boss which requires different polarities to take out each half, and the final boss' frenetic rush of overlapping bullet curtains.
This rhythm is amplified by the chaining system, which is much more proactive on the part of the player compared to Radiant Silvergun's one-colour restriction. Take out 3 enemies of the same colour in a row, regardless of which colour they are, and you'll add one chain to your current count. Each level and setpiece within is cleverly designed so that you can destroy every single enemy, including even extra enemies while not breaking your chain if you're good enough. Even though I'm not able to get S-ranks in any of the stages yet, pulling off the chains is very satisfying, with the maneuvers looking super cool when you time and position them just right. Ikaruga's chaining system feels more genuinely like building up a huge combo than any other shmup chaining system I've experienced, and gradually unraveling the chaining routes through each of the five stages is like peeling off the layers of an onion, giving the stages a new character and feel each time you get higher max chain counts.
A common criticism of Ikaruga is that the game is too slow-paced and "puzzle-like" for a shmup, especially in the first two stages, and frankly it's a criticism I agreed with for a long time, but this slowness withers away if you try chaining and get a greater feel for the polarity shifting. These slowly-scrolling setpieces become lightning fast, with you optimising frames in your movements even when going for A-ranks, let alone S-ranks. It helps that the ship movement speed in Ikaruga feels significantly faster than Radiant Silvergun's somewhat sluggish movement speed too.
You can't really talk about Ikaruga without bringing up its world-renowned presentational qualities. Although I like to avoid the rambling discourse over whether games are art or not, Ikaruga is definitely a game I'd consider to be oozing with artistic qualities. Speaking of art, this game is also blessed with some of the hardest going official artworks ever made, with a beautiful, grungy early 2000's cyberpunk anime kind of style. There's also the small but fantastic soundtrack by the director Hiroshi Iuchi, which while it doesn't quite reach the orchestral highs of Sakimoto's works for Radiant Silvergun, Iuchi's soundtrack perfectly matches the ebb-and-flows of the stages and bosses here, with a dramatic finish.
Admittedly Ikaruga can be a very difficult game to get into. It lacks the same immediate appeal of its predecessor, lacking the same scale in narrative, number of boss fights or even screen space taken by the game itself. The polarity mechanic is also even stranger than RS' 7-weapon system, with it feeling as though it's actively punishing conventional shmup gameplay patterns at points. Despite these idiosyncrasies of the game, for most of my time as a player of this genre, I've always respected Ikaruga, and as more time passes, I increasingly love it as well.